I have spend the past 15 years of my professional life in various Software Engineering roles, primarily in the Telecommunications industry. For the last two years, I’ve also taken on DevOps, Big Data Engineering, Team Lead, and – most recently – Data Scientist positions.
As far as programming languages are concerned, I’ve used quite a few throughout my career, starting with C1 As it turns out, C is far from obsolete, at least according to the latest TIOBE Index. However, these days I much prefer the rich abstractions, functional patterns, and the kind of syntactic sugar offered by more modern languages like Java, Scala, JavaScript, Python, and R2 Although unsuitable for most real-world problems, I sometimes get laughs from reading about Esoteric Programming Languages. My personal favorites are: Malbolge and LOLCODE.
Working within Agile Software Development settings with its “people over processes”, and “fail fast, fail often” attitudes has made me a big fan of this approach – to incrementally build products in close collaboration with stakeholders.
I’m an equally big fan of CI / CD to automate the more tedious3 Tried to avoid writing boring ;) and error-prone tasks in a software development process.
While originally from Germany, I’ve been living in Ireland since 2007. To give you a better idea whereabouts in Germany I’m from, here is a map with a red dot at my hometown’s location:
My passion for software and all things data, however, started many years before coming to Ireland.
Another great passion of mine is revealed in my GitHub handle bwv988 – music, particularly that of Johann Sebastian Bach, Georg Friedrich Händel, and Domenico Scarlatti.4 All three of which, curiously, were born in the same year: 1685!
During their formative years, Scarlatti and Händel traveled extensively throughout Europe, incorporating musical styles they encountered during their voyages into their respective works.
Ultimately, both ended up living and working far away from their original home – something I have in common with them, but sadly that’s where the similarity ends. ;)
For me, one of the most enjoyable aspects about the Ireland of 2019 is the diverse, multi-cultural environment we live in. So many things to learn from each other, so many stories to share.
In that regard, I’m looking forward to learn from and share with my new colleagues!